


Things She Knows

by SpaceWaffleHouseTM



Series: One Shots from the Waffle House [15]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, First Kiss, No Pregnancy, Post TLJ, TROS trailer inspired, a big ole kiss, but soft, possibly, soft but slightly tense, wrote this because fuck sleep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-22
Updated: 2019-10-22
Packaged: 2020-12-28 03:49:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21130277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpaceWaffleHouseTM/pseuds/SpaceWaffleHouseTM
Summary: No one knows her like he does, and no one is more aware of this than she is.





	Things She Knows

**Author's Note:**

> Definitely TRoS trailer inspired so if you haven’t seen it definitely hit up YouTube and return my friends.
> 
> I chose to write this instead of falling asleep, make better life choices, lads, please go to bed.

The conversation has frozen as they look at each other. Whatever they were talking about is forgotten for a tiny, insignificant little half a second as they stare at one another in the dim, white light. She can’t help but notice how it frames his face, how it highlights the hope in his eyes as he looks up at her, and for a moment she sees a mirror image of herself, of the same hope she’d had in hers on the Supremacy. 

He’s like a time capsule, like a treasure trove of memories both good and bad that she’s dug up from long ago, but he knows that, doesn’t he? The bond they share ties them more intimately than they can ever understand, and yet she always tries to find its meaning. 

He does the same. Always watching, always trying to figure out something he’s not meant to, and the only conclusion he walks away with every time is that they are destined to swirl around each other like a hurricane. It’s the same one she draws every time, the same, senseless thought. 

The man in front of her, standing with his feet apart like he wants to walk toward her—or perhaps kneel at her feet, she can’t tell which one he is going to do—doesn’t move, but keeps staring as if he understands what she’s thinking, as if he _ knows _the words and images running through her mind. It’s impossible, he’s impossible, and they’re impossible, but it is the truth. He does know what’s going on inside her head, or at least, he has the vaguest idea. It’s more than anyone else knows. 

The conversation slips back into her mind, and she remembers what they were talking about. She remembers Poe, Finn, Rose, and even Leia, and thinks about every interaction they’ve had with her. 

Poe thinks she’s the solution, that she alone could win them the war, that without her they’re lost. 

Finn looks up to her like she’s some kind of all powerful being, and he’s platonically infatuated with the first person he met after escaping the first order’s reign—the first _ friend _he’d made after knowing loneliness for years. 

Rose tries her best, but even she doesn’t get everything. Even her closest friend doesn’t know all of the gears that make her tick even though she tries her best to understand and help. 

Leia comes the closest of them all; she’s force sensitive, like Rey, but she still can’t quite grasp the internal struggle that’s constantly ongoing inside her head. She can’t grasp what it’s like to be torn like this, because she’s never truly been tempted by the dark. 

Not the way her son has. 

Rey shifts forward slightly, her still ignited lightsaber humming at her side, and finally she speaks, replying to words she remembers the meaning of, but not the phrasing with which they were said. “People keep telling me they know me,” she says, watching light glisten off of a particularly wet strand of his hair. “No one does.”

He looks back at her and surprise flickers in his eyes at the fact that she actually spoke to him. Clearly, he hadn’t been expecting to hear the deep tones of her voice echoing off the walls of the room they’re in—he hadn’t expected to hear any sound at all. 

In front of her eyes, she can see him—_ Ben _—going through the same process she just went through. She sees him thinking through everyone they both know, everyone who claims they understand them or has tried to, and he eventually seems to come to the same conclusion. When he’s done, he looks up at her, and dares a cautious step in her direction that she lets him take. “But I do.”

The words shake her to the core, but she knows they’re true. With how they’re connected, she knows—they _ both _know—that he’s telling her the first real, solid piece of truth about herself that she’s heard since she left Jakku. They know each other in a way no one else ever will, and they have since nearly the moment they met, it just took them a little time to decipher the meaning of it all. 

Slowly, she nods, and together, they cross the space between them. It’s a steady pace they keep, never wavering, never faltering or speeding up, but always remaining consistent. It’s constant like his presence in the force itself—in the way that she can always feel him there even when the bond isn’t showing her his face. “Perhaps you do,” she answers him when they finally stand close enough for her to see the water droplets that have gathered on his face, the bags beneath his eyes that she hadn’t quite noticed when she first saw him that day. 

He whispers her name as he looks at her, and both of them shiver as if they’re cold even though their hearts are racing fast enough to keep their temperatures far above what’s normal. Feelings she’d tried to bury in their time apart bubble to the surface, and she looks at him the same way he’s looking at her—with _ hope. _

This time, she’s the one who whispers his name as she reaches up to rest a hand on his cheek. His skin is cool to the touch at first, most likely from the cold water, but then it warms against hers, and she feels him lean into it a little as he steps closer, and his eyes start to become half-lidded. “Why did you come here?” he asks, but he knows the answer, he’s no fool, he just wants to hear her say it.

She won’t tell him something he already knows, not with words. No, she has to show him through an action which will speak much louder, and though she’s nervous as all hell, she knows what she has to do. 

Rey's tongue comes out to wet her lower lip briefly before she swallows, tasting salt in her mouth as she moves a little closer to him, and her head tilts up as his moves down to meet it. This is a first for her, something she’s never done before, and she’s nervous to get it right, but he’ll understand her meaning no matter how perfect it is, and so she does it. 

The hand on his cheek pulls him in closer to her, and as their eyes finally close, his lips touch hers. 

He melts into her like it’s what he was meant to do all along. One of his hands finds her waist, more to ground himself than to pull her in closer, but their bodies touch anyway as the force begins to come alive around them—as their _ bond _comes alive in ways they never could’ve imagined. 

Like hers, his lips taste like the salt of the sea, and yet it’s the sweetest thing she’s ever tasted. It tastes like home, whatever home is like, and makes the light shining down on them feel a thousand times brighter, like it’s making them glow. 

Her lightsaber deactivates, her thumb twitching over its trigger just before she lets it fall to the floor like he’d just allowed his moments earlier, and she places that hand over the one he has at her waist. Ben’s kisses seem to grow more soft as she laces their fingers together, and brings them down to rest at their sides so that they’re anchoring each other—so _ they _are the thing keeping each other standing. 

She’s dizzy when she eventually pulls away, doing so slowly so as not to give them both whiplash, and only pulling back enough to be able to look into his eyes in the aftermath. “You know me.”

“I know you,” he repeats, nodding his confirmation. 

“Then you know what we have to do.”

One of the corners of his mouth twitches up slightly, making her notice how red and kiss swollen they are as a tiny pinch of pride fills her mind, and she realizes that through only a few words, she’s somehow gotten everything she’s been looking for. His thumb rubs over the back of her knuckles, and she feels the electricity it creates in their bond, knows he feels it, too, and he’s gotten everything _ he’s _been looking for. “I do,” he replies, and as he begins to lead her from the room—slowly, one step at a time—she starts to become aware she’s about to be very used to hearing those words. 

She knows she’s going to be used to hearing them from _ him _ and him alone. 


End file.
